Thread by @BintiStories

EMMA GAMA PINTO
Jacaranda’s Joy: The Purple Lining In Her Winter of Despair & The Country That Turned Her Back On Her Children

Young Emma Christine Dias patiently waited for the man from Suswa Road.

The meeting had been highly anticipated after some painstaking planning. When he finally arrived, he started talking about the population statistics of Jamshedpur, Emma’s home town in India.
@JSRcitytweets

Who does that on their first date?

It was Jacaranda season in Nairobi.
Image courtesy of @hallaboutafrica
Nairobi in the 1950s.

The gentleman could have talked about the Jacaranda Propaganda phenomenon.

The joy that spills over from the blossom of the Jacaranda-induced mirth. There’d be plenty of jollity and riotous mirth of ‘mimo’ (Scientific name, J. mimosifolia) in the streets of Nairobi.
Photo: @OliveNdungutse

When the Jacaranda kisses the blue skies.

Or he could have broached the subject of the vagaries associated with Nairobi’s weather (Even in the 50s, this pick-up line must have been lame).

The meeting had been arranged by her twin sister Joyce, her brother-in-law, Tome, and the prospective groom’s brother, Rosario.

The young gentleman in question who computed the population stats was none other than Pio Gama Pinto.
Image Source: @VitaBooks

For committing that cardinal sin on that all-important first date, the reader will by the end of this story have naturally come to forgive the transgression of one of Kenya’s finest sons. Read on to find out why.

Emma Dias, young, confident, beautiful and vivacious, had arrived in Kenya in September of 1953 to visit with her twin sister. She had just arrived from India to a flurry of inquiries from singles wishing to mingle.

Joyce, her twin, had just recently gotten married to a Goan man working in the Kenyan civil service.

Tome Mendonca was enjoying wedded marital bliss to Joyce in the “Green City in the Sun.”

Pinto’s brother Rosario and Tome used to ride the bus together to work and one day hatched the plan to bring Emma and Pinto together.
Nerves notwithstanding during the first date, there was some good news on the horizon.

Joyce, her husband Tome and Rosario were now the official matchmakers for the new girl in town.

The plan worked.

The beautiful and confident Emma could not escape the peering glances of Goan bachelors- and those of their parents. Bachelors’ families had begun making polite “inquiries” about the new arrival from India.

Expression of interest in the new girl-in-town continued to be on the upswing based on communal chatter.

If there were Dating Apps in the 1950s, Emma’s profile would have been blowing up during the first few months on her maiden visit to Kenya. Despite the surge in interest from the ever-growing field of potential suitors, Rosario and Tome had the upper hand.

Pio Gama Pinto, the 26-year-old journalist who was in the battlefront of liberating Kenya from British rule, was not about to show up for a normal date. He was on the frontlines of a very important mission, a personal one.

Pio wished to emancipate himself from the single life.

Emma’s life, henceforward, was getting into a new phase of adventure and yet another uncharted terrain to a future happiness-and heartbreak.

A January Of Bliss
On January 9,1954 Pio and Emma tied the knot at Parklands Catholic Church.

The wedding was a large wedding by those days’ standards. Of course, a majority of the guests were from the groom’s side. Emma’s parents flew in from India.

The guest list read like the who’s who of the Goan community in Kenya. JM Nazareth raised the toast for the newlyweds. Nazareth went on to represent the Asian populace in segregated Kenya’s Legislative Council (Legco).

Let’s back up a bit.
A year before Emma’s arrival to Kenya was a seminal moment in the country’s history: The Emergency.

Emergency
On October 20,1952 Governor Evelyn Baring declared a state of Emergency in Kenya.

So, what events preceded the declaration of a State of Emergency?

By 1952, the security situation in Kenya colony was fast deteriorating. Mau Mau attacks were on the increase mainly targeting African loyalists. Governor Baring, the new Governor, reached Nairobi on 30 September 1952.

A week later, the senior-most African in the colonial government set-up met a grim end.

On 7 October 1952, Chief Waruhiu wa Kungu of Kiambu District and the Government’s Paramount Chief for Central Province, had left home bright and early for a tribunal session near the city.

Chief Waruhiu was to attend a Native Tribunal hearing close to Nairobi when an ambush caught him off-guard.

Assassins lay in wait as he waited in traffic. On that clear October day, in broad daylight, the murder of Kenya’s senior-most African chief sent shockwaves reverberating in the colony.
Gov Baring at Chief Waruhiu's funeral.

Two days after Waruhiu’s killing, Baring cabled London with one request: ‘Declare a State of Emergency.’

As David Anderson notes in ‘The History of The hanged’: A state of emergency would give the Government powers to detain suspects under special emergency legislation, to impose other laws without reference to London and to deploy the military to aid a civilian government.”

On 14 October, Oliver Lyttelton, Secretary of State of Colonies in Winston Churchill’s Tory Government, gave consent to Baring’s request and Kenya began to prepare for its State of Emergency.

150 Kenya African Union (KAU) officials, including Jomo Kenyatta, Achieng’ Oneko and others, were arrested on the night of 20 October 1952.

Far away on the Indian subcontinent, Emma grew up in Jamshedpur, India. Her father had roots in Goa, then a Portuguese colony seeking to liberate herself from the clutches of colonialism.

The situation in Goa was far too similar to what was going on in Kenya. Pio Gama Pinto was heavily invested in both struggles.

In a recent article, the Ottawa Citizen notes that: “Emma Dias was born in Jamshedpur, India, where her father, a Christian from the Portuguese colony of Goa, worked as a superintendent in the Tata Steel mill.

At the age of eight, Emma and her twin sister, Joyce, were sent to a convent in Darjeeling, in northern India, where they were educated by Irish nuns.” In her 20’s Emma made that life-changing trip to visit her twin-sister in Nairobi, Kenya. Then-Wedding Bells

For Better or For Worse
Pio didn’t promise the former Ms Emma Christine Dias much. He was a socialist and poor. Emma would need to work at some point.

Emma and Pinto settled into the rigors of married life. Emma’s lack of culinary skills was quite apparent-something that Pio soon had to contend with. In the beginning, Pio had a busy schedule and life gradually got to a normal pattern for the newlyweds.

The typical Goan seafood delicacies must have been just as delicious in the 50s-but not so much in the Gama Pinto household.

Unlike some materialistic modern western cultures-including the Kenya of today- where complaining about marriage is an Olympic sport, still, the newlyweds found happiness in the midst of scarcity. Contentment within modesty of the environs.

The minimalist lifestyle of the young journalist and his new wife was somehow contained within the walls of a bedsitter. That bedsitter was too small for Pio Gama Pinto’s dreams, though.

He wanted to scale higher-past the colonial class pretensions and on to the glorious heights of independence.

Pio didn’t want Emma to waste her potential and wither away at home as a housewife. He encouraged her to look for work.

Pio The Husband
Emma spoke with Benegal Pereira on a wide range of issues regarding her life with Pio. What was he like as a husband?

“He was hardly ever there. Within the first six months, he told me, ‘You can’t stay at home. Intelligent women don’t stay home.’ He said, ‘Take a secretarial course and find a job.

And while at it, take Gregg shorthand’ (as opposed to the more popular Pitman shorthand). Pio did Gregg shorthand and he said: ‘One day you will be able to read my shorthand if I need you to read back my notes.’

So, I enrolled at Premier College and started learning Gregg’s. I had hardly finished the course when I had to go (to) work because I didn’t realize (before then) that he wasn’t earning anything.

He would come home at seven or eight in the evening. I would be quite annoyed because we had no phone and his parents were in Nairobi at the time. Pio and I (in the early days of the marriage) lived in the servants’ quarters of a family friend’s house.

Months after she took her secretarial course, Emma landed a job at the International Aeradio Limited (IAL) where she worked as a junior secretary at the British Engineering Firm. IAL was located at the Nairobi West Airport (today’s Wilson Airport).

Are You a Communist?
Rumours were swirling around that Pio was a communist. Emma was quite disturbed by these sentiments which went counter to her own beliefs. During the cold-war era, the competing ideologies of communism and capitalism took root in the former European colonies.

In those days, being a communist would lead to banishment from political activities. One would be shunned from social engagements. In short, one would lead a life of isolation to lost opportunities. So she asked Pio that question: Are you a communist?

Chocolate and a Priest
Here’s the backstory as well-documented by the Goan Voice (UK).

“One of Pio’s many associates was Makhan Singh, who along with Fred Kubai, was engaged in trade union activity. They had tried to register the East African Trade Unions Congress in May of 1949.

The Kenya government could not find adequate reason to reject the application but did so nonetheless, because to their mind Makhan Singh “had all the characteristics of a Communist party member”.

It was an effective way to diminish people who raised unsettling questions about equality in a segregated country.
Source and Image Credit: Kenyankalasingha

In solidarity with Makhan Singh’s struggle for Kenya’s Independence, he was visited at the Dol Dol detention camp in 1961 by his father Sudh Singh, wife Salwant Kaur and his three children Hindpal Singh (b1937), Inderjeet Kaur (b.1945) and Swarajpal Singh (b.1948).

This label of Communist was one that had stuck to Pio as well, something Emma found to be incompatible with her own ideology.”

Emma confronted Pio and informed Pio that she was not keen on being associated with a Communist.

Pio appeared at Emma’s doorstep with chocolate in hand and offered to take up the issue with a priest. That’s when she asked Pio that question: Are you a communist? “No. But I am a committed socialist, committed to the ideals of Gandhism,” he replied.

The issue was then settled.

Part of the crowds of hundreds of jubilant and elated supporters who lined up Nairobi’s Park Road on 20 October 1961, awaiting the return of their freedom fighter, human rights activist and founder of Kenya’s trade unionism-Sardar Makhan Singh (1913-1973).

Anvil’s Claw: You’re Under Arrest

If there was a foreshadowing of living a life of a woman married to Pio Gama Pinto’s activism, this was it. Four weeks into her job, Emma Gama Pinto received a call. The caller informed her that Pio had been arrested.

Emma rushed to Nairobi Prison where she met Fitz Remedios Santana de Souza.

Fitz and his wife Romila would become life-long friends.(Fitz was a lawyer, politician and later Deputy Speaker of the House).

The stakes were high and the time was nigh. Ten minutes. That was roughly the time Pio spent with her.

Pio and Emma had their last conversation outside the prison reception area, near the gates. “I’ll be home soon,” Pio assured her. According to him, this was a mistake that was going to be sorted out.

Unbeknownst to Emma, this was the last time she was to see her husband in the next four years. Just like that, Pio was taken from Emma-in a flash.

In the early days of their marriage, Pio and Emma lived in the servants quarters of Fitz’s house. Fitz’s parents were staying in the main house while Fitz was studying in the United Kingdom.

Five months into their marriage, the anvil had clawed at the heart of Pio Gama Pinto and now, his wife. During the Mau Mau resistance, the British had a difficult time in managing the freedom fighters.

Governor Baring was itching to take things a notch higher despite the Colonial Office not having warmed up to the idea.
21 Oct 1956: Princess Margaret with Sir Evelyn Baring, in Nairobi. Courtesy of @HistoryKE

The Governor asked for more help-from the military. That’s when the operation happened.

Operation Anvil
As per Wikipedia: “Operation Anvil was a British military operation during the Mau Mau Uprising where British troops attempted to remove suspected Mau Mau from Nairobi and place them in Langata Camp or reserves.

The operation began on 24 April 1954 and took two weeks, at the end of which 20,000 Mau Mau suspects had been taken to Langata, and 30,000 more had been deported to the reserves

Anvil had wrought havoc in the lives of the young couple as would the constituent wrought iron of a blacksmith’s anvil.

Like the cumulonimbus clouds, the anvil clouds harkened to a dark era in Kenya’s history. Pio Gama Pinto had been netted in the swoop of Operation Anvil.

Anvil was still no match for Pinto’s steely resolve.

The anvil clouds were hanging on the horizon beckoning the rain far away in the sandy beaches along the coastal strip.

Manda: Amandla!
From Nairobi’s Langata Prison, Pio was sent to Mombasa. He was imprisoned at Fort Jesus Prison and then transferred to Takwa Detention Camp on Manda Island. Manda is an extremely hot and inhospitable island often without the relief of rain.

The malodorous cells awash in putrid water created terrible conditions for the detainees. In 1959, a team from the International Red Cross comprising Dr Marcel Junod and Dr Jean-Maurice Rubli visited Takwa and witnessed the inhumane conditions at Takwa first-hand.

The detention huts were found set in the hollows of the dunes, leaving the detainees without benefit of sea-breeze.

This brought about the effect of being in airless huts which was intolerable, almost beyond the limits of human endurance.

See, the Kenya government believed Mau Mau was a disease, and camps were justified as a means to “mental” rehabilitation.

“Maladjusted individuals, whether they become so through economic, social or ideological causes are very susceptible to such disruptive movements as Mau Mau.” Tom Askwith, Commissioner of Community Development, Kenya 1953.

Detainees were segregated into those who were inclined to rehabilitation, meaning those who co-operated and those branded as “hard-core.”

The hard-core prisoners were kept away from the general population. Manda was pretty much reserved for radicals, like Pio, who now belonged to the hardcore category. Beatings were common in the camps.

Cramped and unsanitary conditions were the order of the day. So filthy were the latrines that the overflowing night-soil buckets that would have created pandemonium of public health proportions in the correctional facilities sector today.

Frequent outbreaks of typhoid, tuberculosis and dysentry were hardly a surprise.

One of Pio’s tasks was to empty night-soil onto the beach. Pellagra-dietary deficiency of Vitamin B12)-and scurvy were common due to the dietary deficiency in the detention camps.

Turtle Eggs for Breakfast?
While on the beach performing his nightly sanitation duties, Pinto would pick up turtle eggs that lay on the beach.Pinto would supplement his diet with the eggs.

At one point, Pio was assigned chores in the canteen. Vintage Pinto would smuggle food rations to share with fellow detainees. Pio Gama Pinto escaped much of the physical brutality that was meted out to fellow detainees.

The experience left him really traumatized.

Years later after his release from detention, he rarely spoke about his experiences there. SILENCE.

Perhaps, silence as Kenya’s third language began manifesting itself during this time. In ‘Dust', Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor @AdhiamboKE speaks of the reticence of Kenya’s past from whence silence emerged as Kenya’s third ‘official’ language.

Rasna Warah @RasnaWarah, in an ‘Ode to Silence’, published by The Elephant, does aver with sadness that the impact of the language of silence on Kenyans has been so great as to numb their collective conscience as a people-to a point of losing our humanity.

SILENCE was a coping mechanism for Pinto: away from the nightmares, trauma, anger, anxiety and mental torture.

To escape the mental anguish, Pio chose one thing-SILENCE.

Emma read a lot to try and understand why Pio was so committed to the ideals of Kenya’s liberation struggle.

It was puzzling to try to figure out Pio Gama Pinto’s foray into liberation politics in a country where he was a double minority; Asian and Goan. Furthermore, Pio was more of an Indian than Kenyan, some would have thought and even said as much.

Born in Nairobi Kenya in 1927 to Anton P Gama and Ema Gama, Pio spent his early years schooling in India. Anton was a civil servant in Nyeri.

Perhaps being Mau Mau made Pio Gama Pinto harness the ability to keep secrets. During the four years Pio was in prison Emma read a lot. She tried to understand why Pio was doing what he was doing for a country many would have considered not his own.

Did Emma Know of Pio’s Affiliation with the Mau Mau? To this question, Emma’s answer was straightforward.

“No. I didn’t know the name Mau Mau. (Elsewhere, she says that Pinto never spoke to her about politics. It was a way of shielding her). I knew he worked for the Indian National Congress in the Desai Memorial Building (in Nairobi).

I was not aware he was actively involved in the African political movement.”

Pinto the Avant Garde
If there was a lack of superheroes in the 1960s, then Kenya had just found one amongst her ranks. Pio Gama Pinto. If Pinto’s body of work was framed into a poem, this Great son of Kenya of Goan origin would have without doubt been our avant-garde of poetry.

If Pinto were a poet,his craftsmanship would have torn the hypocrisy of the Kenyan Project apart. Indeed, Pinto the revolutionary managed to turn the politics of Kenya upside-down. One just had to like this Pinto guy. His guts!

Kicked Out
In the Kenya of those days, racial segregation was the law.

Living quarters, restaurants and establishments had separate sections for Europeans, Asians and predictably, Africans-(from whom the colonialists stole land and minerals, natural resources)-who occupied the lowest rung of the social ladder.

Pio used to get thrown out-a lot.

Pio Gama Pinto, the non-conformist, would be thrown out of European establishments in Nairobi and Mombasa. Europeans would think aloud; the nerve of this Goan guy!

Former Daily Nation journalist Cyprian Fernandes, in a tribute to Pio, writes:

“For instance, Pinto broke the apartheid rules by entering European restaurants and hotels in Nairobi and Mombasa in the early 1950s.

He and his friends would be physically ejected or coerced to leave by the police. As a result of his efforts, plus the changing political situation nearer to Independence, non-whites were finally allowed access to such places.”

Release
Pio was placed under restrictive orders in Kabarnet where Emma was allowed to live with him for almost two years. Pio was released in 1959.
This photo in Kabarnet occasioned Emma’s sepia-toned past.

Independence
Fernandes writes in ‘Emma Pinto: They Killed My Husband Too Soon’: “Upon release, Pinto got more involved in his political activities, joining others in the final leg of the fight for independence that finally paid off in 1963.”

A February of Despair
The anvil clouds came back on that February day in the Year of Our Lord 1965. Emma Gama Pinto narrates the events of that fateful day.

In Her Own Words
We were living at Number 6 Lower Kabete Road (in Westlands, Nairobi) at the time.

The house had been donated to Pio. He had bought me a little car so that I could have some independence as far as transport was concerned.

The new government was now nearly 14 months old and they had decided to get rid of all the English secretaries and Pio told me: “You are going to be the secretary to Achieng’ Oneko, the Minister for Information, Broadcasting and Tourism.’

(On that day) Pio had dropped me off at my office in Jogoo House and had returned home to collect his parliamentary papers (he was then an MP). My car was being serviced.

About an hour later, I was in Achieng’s office, around 9 o'clock when my mother called me on the phone to say that Pio had been attacked (outside the house) and she was hysterical. I said, ‘I will be home soon. I am coming home right away.’

But I am a very, very calm person in any emergency. So, I immediately phoned the Minister for Defence, Dr Njoroge Mungai, and told his office that Pio had been attacked and said, ‘Please send the police there.

Then I picked up the phone and rang Joe Murumbi (a close family friend, Cabinet Minister and later, Vice-President) because he would not have left the office because Parliament does not start until 11a.m. He was minister for Foreign Affairs.

Left to Right: Dr. Euclid de Souza, Vice-President of Goan Overseas Assoc, Joseph Zuzarte Murumbi, Foreign Affairs Minister, Luis de Assis Correia, Rosario Gama Pintoand Pio Gama Pinto at a Barclays Bank Branch, Nairobi Sundowner in 1964.
Photo: Luis Assis Correia collection

He and his wife Sheila lived five minutes away from us. Said to him, ‘Joe, Pio has been attacked, please go to our house.’

Next, I ran into Achieng’s office and said, ‘Can I have your car?’ He said his car was in the garage for repairs or a service. Then I rang (Jaramogi) Oginga Odinga’s office(he was the then Vice-President and later, an opposition leader.

He was ideologically a socialist-like Pinto) and spoke to an American girl, Caroline Odongo, the secretary, and said to her: ‘Caroline, Caroline, can I get a car to take me home?

Pio has been attacked.’ She said she would call me back immediately. She did. She told me the spare car was being sent round to the front of Jogoo House and would be waiting for me.

All the time, I assumed that Pio had been attacked and that he had been injured. As I got to the gate of our house, I saw our car had been parked at the gate and as I got out of Odinga’s car, I saw Murumbi arriving in his car.

As we walked past the car and into our home to find out about Pio, my mother said, ‘He is still in the car, he has been killed.’

That was the first time I had heard that Pio had been killed. So we both dashed out to the car and saw that Pio’s body had been covered in a pink blanket.

My mother had asked our house servant, a nice young man called Waweru, to cover Pio. Pio usually gave our 18-month-old daughter Tereshka a ride from the back of the house to the gate from where she would be collected by the maid and walked home.

When the maid got back to the car, she heard shots and ran back to the house to get Waweru.

She really did not see too much because she was terrified. By the time Waweru got to the car, Pio had already been shot.

The person arrested for the murder was a teenager at the time. Kisilu Mutua was nineteen. Nineteen!

Some accounts have reported that Kisilu Mutua was 22 at the time of his arrest.Many believe that although the facts of the case placed Mutua at the scene of the crime, he was the fall guy for the Special Branch.

Special Branch
Special Branch was a part of the police force that was formed in 1952 under the British administration. Part of its mandate was to provide intelligence during the Mau Mau resistance

Doubts
Kisilu Mutua was sentenced to death in 1965.

After having served 36 years in jail, Mutua counted his blessings when he was a beneficiary of a Presidential pardon. President Daniel Arap Moi pardoned him and he was released on July 4, 2001.

According to the Daily Nation report: “Mr. Kisilu told Mr Justice John Mativo of Nairobi Milimani High Court that when he was arrested on February 24, 1965 he was tortured at the police station and forced to sign a pre-prepared statement.”

“Burnt out of this world”
In an interview with veteran journalist Cyprian Fernandes that was conducted in 2015, Emma Gama intimated that Pio seemed to have been burnt out of this world after his death.

Despite having been a journalist and a politician it is curious that Pio Gama Pinto’s footprints in the literary world are scant.

Not much that has been written by her late husband is available today. As Fernandes says,”every scrap of paper that was blessed by his hand – appeared to have disappeared from the face of the earth or could not be accessed.”

Perhaps the two friends Pio had thought they were protecting him. The gush of fire that illuminated the house wailed together with the papers that were being consumed by the flames.

Up with the fire went Pio Gama Pinto’s letters, articles, books and speeches. All the diaries, newspaper clippings, policies strategies, minutes of meetings written by the avowed socialist were burnt in the bonfire. Anything he had ever written-gone.

John Kamau, writing for the Daily Nation in Emma Gama Pinto, The Widow That Kenya Betrayed says: “Pranlal Sheth and Sarjit Singh Heyer, the two men who burnt the documents, perhaps meant well.

They feared that whoever killed Pinto-or ordered his killing-could now turn to Emma, the nationalist’s young wife. Emma, then only 37, was advised to leave and that is how she left with her three children, Linda, Malusha and Tereshka, for Ottawa, Canada.“

Why?
In his book, Fitz de Souza refers to an altercation between Pio and Kenya’s Founding President.
In this undated photo: Joseph Murumbi, Fitz de Souza and Robert Ouko at the United Nations
Image courtesy of African Heritage House

From the Ottawa Citizen: "Pio resumed his activism as soon as he was out.

He met Malcolm X, organized local trade unions and wrote in support of the Kenya African National Union, the socialist party that would dominate Kenya’s political scene after the country’s independence in December 1963.

Meanwhile, Emma raised their three children, Linda, Malusha and Tereshka, while continuing to work as a secretary.

In July 1964, Pio became a member of the country’s Parliament,

Mheshimiwa.
Image Credit: Getty Images

In July 1964, Pio became a member of the country’s Parliament, where he clashed with the country’s first president, Jomo Kenyatta, and accused him of “grabbing” English farms for himself and those allied to him.

On the morning of Feb. 24, 1965, Emma was in the government office where she worked when she received a call from her mother, who was visiting from India.”

The Purge
Pio’s assassination was a harbinger of things to come. Before Emma left Kenya in 1967,

she realized that a lot of Pio’s friends were casualties of the fallout between Jomo Kenyatta and his Vice-President Jaramogi Oginga Odinga in 1966. Jaramogi left the ruling party KANU and formed the Kenya People’s Union (KPU).

Remember the friend who helped set fire on Pinto’s Papers? Well, Pranlal Sheth paid for being a close ally of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga. He was stripped off his Kenyan citizenship and was later deported to India.

John Kamau, writing for the Daily Nation alludes to India Being more a country of Sheth’s ancestors than a country Pio’s friend knew.

He continues to say:”His only other possible mistake was that as a journalist, Mr Sheth had, in the pre-Independence days, worked together with Pinto as editors of the Daily Chronicle and as members of the Socialist-oriented Kenya Indian Congress.

It was this small group of socialists who dreamt of starting a commune in Ruaraka under the leadership of Francis Xavier Da Silva — who was known as Baba Dogo.”

According to Kamau, what Kenya forgot was that Sheth was a key advisor to politicians as they negotiated independence from the British. What Kenya forgot was that Janlal Sheth had taken an active role in the Lancaster House Conference where the Kenyan Constitution was birthed.

Kenya had forgotten that Janlal Sheth had been a member of the commissions that drafted agricultural, economic and broadcasting policies for the nascent republic.

In a letter dated 15 August 1966 and addressed to Kenyatta, Joseph Murumbi stated that he would like to resign as the Vice-President of Kenya.

John Keen was detained from 23 May 1967.
The Lumumba Institute which Pio had raised funds for was shut down and all the directors were asked to leave. The institute’s aim was to train KANU leaders under the directorship of the fabled Kapenguria Six.

Fearless! Picnic Out of Town
Before she’d even met her husband, Emma was with a group of Goans who wanted to go for a picnic. It so happened that the bus driver was black, the only person in the group driving a busload of the mostly Kenyan group of South Asian descent.

Driving While Black was still a phenomenon even during pre-independence days. A white 6ft plus policeman summoned the bus driver and motioned him to pull over. So he did.

After what seemed like an eternity for routine questioning, the bus passengers started wondering what was going on.

In a whiff, Emma got off the bus and challenged the policeman-all in her 4 ft tall frame.
“Why are you stopping us?
The driver was driving recklessly
No. He was not. You either charge him or release him.
Young lady…

No. You either charge him or you let us go.
Exasperated, the policeman was
OK. You can go now.But I’ll be watching!’’
That was Emma.Young Emma Christine Dias in all her fearless glory! According to her daughter, Linda, "Mother only knew one direction forward!"

Life In Canada: Emigrated To Canada Alone
Jamhuri Day celebrations in Ottawa -10 December 2008 with Judy Bahemuka, Kenya High Commissioner to Canada and the Van Rosi Duo.

When life gave her lemons, Emma made lemonade.

“I’m sure there are widows in Canada. If they could manage, then I could manage.” Such was the fighting spirit of Emma Gama Pinto.

Linda Gama Pinto, in an appearance with @untileveryoneisfree asserts that while her father had talents and friends, her mother Emma did not have those resources.

“She was quite powerful in her own right. True, she was not an organizer, he (Pio) did a lot of that. I often wonder, if my mum did not have children, what changes she would have wrought in the world.

Emma retreated to a normal working-class life in Canada.

Having been trained in shorthand, Emma wasn’t afraid of taking risks. She took up the Minutes-secretary position which was at the time, a male-dominated field.

Working evenings, the pay was more than a regular day shift. So she worked for Seneca College for some time. Another opportunity arose for Emma to become the Minutes Secretary at the Scarborough Board of Education. That was the first time a woman had held that position.

Camping in Canada
Grizzly bears of Canada. That’s what conjures up the mind when one hears of camping tales from America’s Northern neighbor.

Driving 1500 km across Canada with her three little girls, Emma traversed the vastness of the land and went camping with her little ones.

Being young, Linda explains that everyone else around them looked like giants but that her mother Emma, wasn’t afraid that they hadn’t gone camping before.

Tents and camping gear came in handy for the Gama Pintos during that unforgettable outing in Maple Leaf country.
.

Jacaranda
Though the colonialists denied Pio a chance to visit his dying father, perhaps now, as one writer notes, it’s quite ironic that they were united in death. Father and son were both buried at Nairobi’s City Park. United. In Death.

Photo credit: @suhayllo

The Jacaranda season will soon be upon us. The countenance of the purple by Pinto’s face, still shining bright.

Scripture says that we shall see His face.

Let those flowers bloom by the gravesite. Purple Rain of the anvil clouds would remind one of the red blood spilled in the fight for independence against the blue sky.

Prince reminded us that it was all about the red and blue recorded in end time glory.

As one admirer said, "Emma went to be with her Pinto” last year-united again in death.

Guided by her faith, there is always that belief of a life beyond the horizon. And the Jacaranda kissed the blue Nairobi sky goodbye one last time.

In the horizon of Nairobi’s City Park is a blooming Jacaranda variety.

The rare species is now white, giving shade to the tombstone of a unique nationalist.

The Alba. Jacaranda mimosifolia alba, also known as the White Christmas, adorning Nairobi's City Park, under whose shade Nairobians rest.
Photo: @cityparkfriends

In the same hallowed grounds, Pinto rests next to his father, Anton.

Another Great son of Kenya of Goan descent and Pinto’s bosom friend Joseph Zuzarte Murumbi is also buried beneath the shade of the blooming trees; at City Park.

The words on the tombstone, so unabashedly serving as a constant reminder of the dying embers of Kenya’s past that Pinto’s legacy will rake into a glowing flame.

This Christmas, under the shade of the alba, the ‘White Christmas’ at City Park, we reflect upon those words inscribed on Pio Gama Pinto’s epitaph.

It is so written: “If he has been extinguished, yet there arise a thousand beacons from the spark he bore.”